WHAT
WOULD GANDHI DO TODAY??To Promote His Philosophy of Truth Through Non-Violence?
What Actions Would He Do to Confront Today's Issues?

Mohandas K. Gandhi's writings through the years were not
always consistent philosophically
or practically which allows everyone from anarchist pacifists to state
socialists
to terrorists to say -- "Yeah, this is what Gandhi would do!" (Gandhi
did support use of violence as a last resort in extreme situtations.)
However,
the spiritual, political and strategic quotes offered here show an
internal
consistency
in his the search for truth, belief in nonviolence, individual liberty
and the minimal state.
This page originally was dedicated to promoting this
interpretation of a
consistent
Gandhian viewpoint. However, it also now is dealing being used to
promote the GANDHIAN CAMPAIGN AGAINST THE WAR LOBBIES.

During his sixty-odd years as an attorney, journalist, speaker
and
activist, Mohandas K. Gandhi (the “Mahatma” or "Great One") published a
massive body of work collected into more than a hundred
volumes.
I have collected the quotes below from Gandhi’s writings included
especially
in “For Pacifists”, B. Kumarappa, Editor, which includes Gandhi's ideas
on
nonviolent governance, as well as from “The Essential Gandhi”, Louis
Fisher,
Editor; “The Book of Gandhi Wisdom”, Trudy S. Settel, Editor; Joan
Bondurant’s “Conquest of Violence” and other sources.
If you want to find the actual source you might put a phrase
in a search engine since so many of Gandhi's
writing are now online. See links.
(Greenleaf Books, Canton, Maine, USA also carries many
of Gandhi's books, including original, early Indian editions.)

GANDHI ON
SOUL
Desire for
enjoyment creates bodies for the soul...The soul that is hidden beneath
this earthly crust is one and the same for all men and women belonging
to all climes. There is a real and substantial unity in all the
variety we see around us...The force of spirit is ever progressive and
endless...If we turn our eyes to the time of which history has any
record we shall find that man has been steadily progression towards
Ahimsa [love and non-violence]...The moment he awakens to the spirit he
cannot remain violent...How many lifetimes may be needed for mastering
the greatest spiritual force that mankind has ever known?
[Ahimsa] But why worry even if it means several lifetimes?
For, if this is the only permanent thing in life, if this is the only
thing that counts, then whatever effort you bestow on mastering it is
well-spent..Souls must react upon souls. And since non-violence
is essentially a quality of soul, the only effective appeal to the soul
must lie through non-violence...Pit soul-force against
brute-force...Fear is not a disease of the body; fear kills the soul.

GANDHI ON
FAITH
Faith gains in strength only
when people are willing to lay down their lives for it....Faith is not
like a delicate flower which would wither away....Robust faith in
oneself and brave trust of the opponent, so-called or real, is
the best safeguard....A living faith cannot be manufactured by the rule
of [the] majority....What is faith if it is not translated into
action?...Faith
is not imparted like secular subjects. It is given through the language
of the heart....Every living faith must have within itself the power of
rejuvenation if it is to live. Just as the body cannot exist without
blood,
so the soul needs matchless and pure strength of faith....My effort
should
never be to undermine another's faith but to make him a better follower
of his own faith....Even as a tree has a single trunk but many branches
and leaves, there is one religion-- human religion--but any number of
faiths.

GANDHI ON
TRUTH
Truth alone will endure; all
the rest will be swept away before the tide of time....What may appear
as truth to one person will often appear as untruth to another
person. But that need not worry the seeker....Truth and untruth
often co-exist; good and evil often are found together....Use truth as
your anvil, nonviolence as your hammer and anything that does not stand
the test when it is brought to the anvil of truth and hammered with
nonviolence, reject it....Truth and nonviolence demand that no human
being may debar himself
from serving any other human being, no matter how sinful he may
be....Truth
is the first to be sought for, and Beauty and Goodness will then be
added
unto you....An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied
propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees
it....Truth without humility would be an arrogant caricature....The
quest of truth involves self-suffering, sometimes even unto death.

Gandhi
Memorial in Washington, DC
GANDHI ON SATYAGRAHA (TRUTH-FORCE)
Satyagraha is a relentless
search for truth and a determination to search truth....Satyagraha is
an attribute of the spirit within....Satyagraha has been designed as
an effective substitute for violence.... Satyagraha is a process of
educating public opinion, such that it covers all the elements of the
society and
makes itself irresistible....The fight of Satyagraha is for the strong
in
spirit, not the doubter or the timid. Satyagraha teaches us the art of
living
as well as dying....Satyagraha, of which civil-resistance is but a
part,
is to me the universal law of life....Satyagraha can rid society of all
evils,
political, economic, and moral...A genuine Satyagraha should never
excite
contempt in the opponent even when it fails to command regard or
respect....Satyagraha thrives on repression till at last the repressor
is tired and the object
of Satyagraha is gained....Satyagraha does not depend on the outside
[for]
help; it derives all its strength from within....The method of
Satyagraha
requires that the Satyagrahi should never lose hope, so long as there
is
the slightest ground left for it....In the dictionary of Satyagraha,
there
is no enemy. Since Satyagraha is a method of conversion and conviction,
it
seeks never to use the slightest coercion... For a Satyagraha brigade,
only
those are eligible who believe in ahimsa--nonviolence and
satya--truth...
A Satyagrahi has infinite patience, abundant faith in others, and ample
hope....A
Satyagrahi cannot go to law for a personal wrong....In the code of the
Satyagrahi,
there is no such thing as surrender to brute force.

GANDHI ON
ENDS AND MEANS
Violence
breeds violence...Pure goals can never justify impure or violent
action...They say the means are after all just means. I would say
means
are after all everything. As the means, so the end....If we take
care
of the means we are bound of reach the end sooner or later.

GANDHI ON
WOMAN
Woman is more fitted
than man to make exploration and take bolder action in nonviolence...
There is no occasion for women to consider themselves subordinate or
inferior to men....Woman is the companion of man, gifted with equal
mental capacity....If by strength is meant moral power, then woman is
immeasurably man's superior....If nonviolence is the law of our being,
the future is
with women....

GANDHI ON
FREEDOM
The spirit of
political and international liberty is universal and, it may even be
said, instinctive...The attainment of freedom, whether for a man, a
nation or the world, must be in exact proportion to the attainment of
non-violence by each...There is no such thing as slow freedom.
Til
we are fully free we are all slaves...I want freedom for the full
expression
of my personality. I must be free to build a staircase to Sirius
if
I want to...No action which is not voluntary can be called moral.
So long as we act like machines there can be no question of
morality....Freedom
is like birth. Till we are fully free, we are slaves....No charter of
freedom
will be worth looking at which does not ensure the same measure of
freedom
for the minorities as for the majority....True nonviolence should mean
a
complete freedom from ill-will and anger and hate and an overflowing
love
for all....Complete independence does not mean arrogant isolation or a
superior
disdain for all help....If it is man's (sic) privilege to be
independent,
it is equally his duty to be inter-dependent.... Any action that is
dictated
by fear or by coercion of any kind ceases to be moral....Freedom of the
individual
is at the root of all progress.

GANDHI ON
GOVERNMENT
Government
control gives rise to fraud, suppression of Truth, intensification of
the black market and artificial scarcity. Above all, it unmans
the
people and deprives them of initiative, it undoes the teaching of
self-help...I look upon an increase in the power of the State with the
greatest fear because, although while apparently doing good by
minimizing exploitation, it does
the greatest harm to mankind by destroying individuality which lies at
the
heart of all progress...Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in
India,
history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the
blackest....We find the general work of mankind is being carried on
from day to day be
the mass of people acting as if by instinct....If they were
instinctively
violent the world would end in no time...It is when the mass mind is
unnaturally
influenced by wicked men that the mass of mankind commit
violence.
But they forget it as they commit it because they return to their
peaceful
nature immediately the evil influence of the directing mind has been
removed....A
government that is evil has no room for good men and women except in
its
prisons.

GANDHI ON
NON-VIOLENT ACTION AND
CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE
Civil
disobedience becomes a sacred duty when the state has become lawless or
corrupt. And a citizen who barters with such a state shares in its
corruption and lawlessness...Every citizen is responsible for every act
of his government...There is only one sovereign remedy, namely,
non-violent non-cooperation. Whether we advertise the fact or
not, the moment we cease to support the government
it dies a nature death....My method is conversion, not coercion, it is
self-suffering,
not the suffering of the tyrant....I hope the real Swaraj (self-rule)
will
come not by the acquisition of authority by the few but by the
acquisition
by all of the courage to resist authority when abused. In other
words,
Swaraj is to be attained by education the masses to a sense of their
capacity
to regulate ad control authority.... Civil disobedience is the
assertion
of a right which law should give but which it denies...Civil
disobedience
presupposes willing obedience of our self-imposed rules, and without it
civil
disobedience would be cruel joke....Civil disobedience means capacity
for
unlimited suffering without the intoxicating excitement of
killing....Disobedience to be civil has to be open and
nonviolent....Disobedience to be civil implies discipline, thought,
care, attention...Disobedience that is wholly civil
should never provoke retaliation....Non-cooperation and civil
disobedience
are different but [are] branches of the same tree call Satyagraha
(truth-force)....
Coercion cannot but result in chaos in the end....One who uses coercion
is
guilty of deliberate violence. Coercion is inhuman....Non-cooperation
with
evil is as much a duty as cooperation with good... Nonviolent action
without
the cooperation of the heart and the head cannot produce the intended
result....All through history the way of truth and love has always
won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time they
can seem invincible, but
in the end they always fall, always.

GANDHI ON
NON-VIOLENT GOVERNMENT
The science of
war leads one to dictatorship, pure and simple. The science of
non- violence alone can lead one to pure democracy...The states that
are today nominally democratic have either to become frankly
totalitarian or, if they are to become truly democratic, they must
become courageously non-violent. Power is of two kinds. One
is obtained by fear of punishment and the other by arts of love.
Power based on love is thousand times more effective and permanent than
power derived from fear of punishment....
When a respectable
minority objects to any rule of conduct, it would be dignified
of the majority to yield...No organization can run smoothly when it is
divided
into two camps, each growling at each other and each determined to have
its
own way by hook or by crook...The spirit of democracy is not a
mechanical
thing to be adjusted by abolition of forms. It requires change of
heart...My
notion of democracy is that under it the weakest should have the same
opportunity
as the strongest. That can not happen except through
non-violence...It
is a blasphemy to say non-violence can be practiced only by individuals
and
never by nations which are compose of individuals...The nearest
approach
to purest anarchy would be a democracy based on non-violence...A
society
organized and run on the basis of complete non-violence would be the
purest
anarchy....

GANDHI ON
NON-VIOLENT POLICE
I have conceded that even in
a non-violent state a police force may be necessary...Of course, I can
and do envisage a state where the police would be unnecessary but
whether we shall succeed in realizing it, the future alone will
show....Police ranks will be composed of believers in
non-violence. The people will instinctively render them every
help and through mutual cooperation they
will easily deal with the ever decreasing disturbances...Violent
quarrels
between labor and capital and strikes will be few and far between in a
non-violent state because the influence of the non-violent majority
will be great as
to respect the principle elements in society. Similarly, there
will
be no room for communal disturbances....

GANDHI ON
NON-VIOLENT ARMY
A non-violent
army acts unlike armed men, as well in times of peace as in times of
disturbances. Theirs will be the duty of bringing warring
communities together, carrying peace propaganda, engaging in activities
that would bring and keep them in touch with every single person in
their parish or division. Such an army should be ready to cope
with any emergency, and in order to still the frenzy of mobs should
risk their lives in numbers sufficient for that purpose. ...Satragrapha
(truth-force) brigades can be organized in every village and every
block of buildings in the cities. In non-violent bodies the
charger or soul force must mean everything and the
physique must take second place. It is difficult to find such
persons. That is why the non-violent force must be small if it is
to efficient.
[If the
non-violent society is attacked from without] there are two ways open
to non-violence. To yield possession, but non-cooperate with the
aggressor...prefer death to submission. The second way would be
non-violent
resistance by the people who have been trained in the non-violent
way...The
unexpected spectacle of endless rows upon rows of men and women simply
dying
rather than surrender to the will of an aggressor must ultimately melt
him
and his soldiery...A nation or group which has made non-violence its
final
policy cannot be subjected to slavery even by the atom bomb....Before
general
disarmament commences some nation will have to disarm herself and take
large
risks. The level of non-violence in that nation, if that even
happily
comes to pass, will naturally have risen so high as to command
universal
respect.

GANDHI ON
NON-VIOLENT ECONOMICS
Economic
equality is the master key to non-violent independence...A non-violent
system of government is impossible as long as the wide gulf between the
rich
and the hungry millions persists....A violent and bloody revolution is
a
certainty one day unless there is a voluntary abdication of riches and
the
power riches give and a sharing of them for the public good....All have
not
the same capacity...I would not cramp talent...I want to bring about an
equalization
of status....

GANDHI ON
THE CREATION OF ISRAEL
My sympathies
are all with the Jews. I have known them intimately in South Africa.
Some of them became life-long companions. Through these friends I came
to learn much of their age-long persecution. They have been the
untouchables of Christianity. The parallel between their treatment by
Christians and the treatment of untouchables by Hindus is very close.
Religious sanction has been invoked in both cases for the justification
of the inhuman treatment meted out to them. Apart from the friendships,
therefore, there is the more common universal reason for my sympathy
for the Jews.
But my sympathy
does not blind me to the requirements of justice. The cry for the
national home for the Jews does not make much appeal to me. The
sanction for it is sought in the Bible and the tenacity with which the
Jews have hankered after return to Palestine. Why should they not, like
other peoples of the earth, make that country their home where they are
born and where they earn their livelihood?
Palestine
belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the
English or France to the French. It is wrong and in-human to impose the
Jews on the Arabs. What is going on in Palestine today cannot be
justified by any moral code of conduct. The mandates have no sanction
but that of the last war. Surely it would be a crime against humanity
to reduce the proud Arabs so that Palestine can be restored to the Jews
partly or wholly as their national home.
The nobler
course would be to insist on a just treatment of the Jews wherever they
are born and bred. The Jews born in France are French in precisely the
same sense that Christians born in France are French. If the Jews have
no home but Palestine, will they relish the idea of being forced to
leave the other parts of the world in which they are settled? Or
do they want a double home where they can remain at will? This
cry for the national home affords a colourable justification for
the German expulsion of the Jews.
...And now a word to the Jews in Palestine. I
have no doubt that they are going about it the wrong way. The Palestine
of the Biblical conception is not a geographical tract. It is in their
hearts. But if they must look to the Palestine of geography as their
national home, it is wrong to enter it under the shadow of the British
gun. A religious act cannot be performed with the aid of the bayonet or
the bomb. They can settle in Palestine only by the goodwill of the
Arabs. They should seek to convert the Arab heart.... (November 1938)
See quotes
from Zionists over 100 years calling for expulsion of Arabs from
Palestine as a pre-requisite for the creation and maintainance of a
Jewish state.